Below is the Executive Summary for our final report:

The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education (LAUSD Board) engaged Collaborate to develop an outreach plan to engage all District stakeholders for the purpose of collecting a wide range of information that could be used to inform the Board as it begins the search process for the next superintendent of LAUSD.

Given the  significance of this position—especially during one of the most challenging years for public education in the nation—it was paramount to everyone that this outreach touched and captured the viewpoints of all stakeholders in the process, especially those who are often not included. In fact, during the outreach process, many stakeholders made a point to mention their appreciation at being included in this comprehensive outreach. 

At the outset, Collaborate conducted in-depth interviews with all seven LAUSD Board members and their staff, as well as representatives from district unions, including those for teachers, administrators, maintenance workers and police. These interviews enabled our team to: 1) gather important content, context, and insights that we used in the creation of the primary information-gathering tool in our outreach activities: a stakeholder-driven survey mainly conducted online; and 2) work with Board Members to identify preferred groups for outreach and existing frameworks for communication.

After the initial outreach phase, Collaborate created a survey to obtain stakeholder input. We created a media kit that we distributed to stakeholder groups including Board Member Offices, Council Offices, Neighborhood Councils, NGOs and Non-Profit Organizations, and educational affinity groups to distribute the survey. Using street teams, we also visited 129 schools with a high SENI rating to gather feedback for the survey on-site during student pickup and dropoff.  In addition to the survey, Collaborate hosted 14 facilitations.  Each Board Member hosted two facilitations; in addition, we held a number of facilitations and focus groups with key stakeholders.

Over this eight-week outreach effort, our engagement efforts resulted in the 28,569 total members of the LAUSD stakeholder community providing input via the survey (complete and partially complete survey responses). Furthermore, the survey was available in the eight most widely spoken languages in LAUSD, including English, Spanish, Russian, Korean, Armenian, Tagalog, Mandarin, and Arabic. All focus groups and facilitated listening sessions were also simultaneously translated into Spanish, some were in Spanish with translation to English, and one session was translated into Korean.

An overarching theme of our engagement is that LAUSD stakeholders want to see a superintendent plugged into the particular needs, culture and inner workings of the district and region at large. In addition, many stakeholders feel they are not listened to; that they hear updates about their local school and the District from the news or through forwarded emails, instead of from the Superintendent or the Board. We believe our extensive experience doing large-scale, culturally competent communication helped stakeholders feel comfortable sharing insights and being honest about their particular experiences in the district.